Internet Agrees on First Ever Thing: The Sound Mix in "Tenet" Is Bad

Bane was just the beginning.

Christopher Nolan’s confounding blockbuster Tenet was always going to polarise viewers, and the mixed reviews its receiving confirms this won’t be as beloved as his previous epics Inception or The Dark Knight.

However, the filmmaker has earned a consistent chorus from fans and detractors alike for one thing in particular: the sound mixing. Which is terrible. And no, it wasn't just your cinema.

Before we get any further, watch this video that Christopher Nolan has definitely never seen.

Now, Nolan is no stranger to criticism for his film’s sound mixing, beginning with The Dark Knight Rises and the muffling of Tom Hardy’s bemasked Bane, through to Dunkirk, which, um, also had Tom Hardy in an unintelligible mask.

But Tenet is something else.

Without spoiling anything about the movie, just know that most of the actors—John David Washington, Robert Pattinson and Kenneth Branagh, particularly—spend some time behind masks themselves, or communicating over radio, and are often very difficult to understand. However, even when not masked, Nolan’s levels are way off in dialogue-heavy scenes, in which seemingly essential exposition is drowned out by the score, or is otherwise just too damn low to comprehend.

As we wrote in our review, Tenet has a "muffled sound design that obscures nearly half of the spoken dialogue, which doesn’t help our comprehension either."

And for a film that spends most of its time relaying seemingly essential information about the mechanics of its own plot, you kinda need to hear what’s going on to go along with the ride.

Those who’ve been able to see the movie as it slowly rolls out around the world agree it’s a major misstep.

Tenet solid; sound mix awful

— Will Southers (@shoerust) August 22, 2020

One thing I didn't say in my #Tenet review is the sound mix was terrible. The bass was really high & with every character wearing masks at one time or another, half the dialogue was unintelligible. Could be a theatre issue but if you had trouble with Bane, you're fucked here.

— Travis Johnson (@CelluloidWhisky) August 21, 2020

#TENET Okay warning if you're going to see Tenet. Check if you can get closedcaptions/subtitles. This is the worst the sound mixing has ever been for a Nolan movie. I don't care if you perfectly understood Bane, YOU WILL NEED SUBTITLES

— ＭＯＲＤＥＫＡＩ　浦ギる (@RedTigerDragoon) August 22, 2020

I am not going to be able to appreciate TENET until I can re-watch it with subtitles. There were full scenes where I didn't catch ANY of the dialogue due to characters mumbling or blaring music.

— Stuart J Richards 🏳️‍🌈 (@stueyjrichards) August 23, 2020

Meanwhile, over on Reddit, some fans are already chasing a screenplay or a pirated copy of the movie (just so they can rewatch for the sake of dialogue, they swear).

Just one problem:

I guess one positive for TENET when it comes to fighting piracy is that if the dialogue and sound mix are that unintelligible and oppressive in the cinema, it'll be like listening to a white noise app on a cam copy

— Andrew Todd (@mistertodd) August 23, 2020

So, why does Nolan have such a problem with audible dialogue?

One suggestion: he doesn't want you to hear it.

In a 2014 interview with The Verge, his Interstellar sound designer Richard King explained you aren't always supposed to hear the dialogue, because the emotion is more important: "It's more about the experience. The visceral experience of the movie. Being with it. Allowing yourself to be carried along by it. Not grasping for every word, because some of the words are intentionally downplayed in favor of the emotion of that moment give by the actors' emotion and performances."

Nolan himself later backed this up in a chat with the Hollywood Reporter.

Some buy it.

Others, not so much.

Critics be like "Tenet had terrible sound mixing and we couldn't hear the dialogue" and Nolan fans be like "You dumbass Nolan is aiming for realism"

Bro he doesn't want to adr the dialogue (and uses loud IMAX cameras) because I don't know...

— 🗡️🗡️Amshu🔪🔪 (@_amshu321) August 22, 2020

So, to everyone out there yet to brave Tenet, we wish you godspeed.

(Stolen from a Facebook post in Nolan fan group) “How some of the scenes in Tenet sounded like” from r/tenet

(Fun fact: Dunkirk and Inception both won Sound Mixing Oscars.)

Header Image: Warner Bros. Pictures